U.S. Environmental Policy: Where is it Headed? / Dim Vision

U.S. Environmental Policy: Where is it Headed?

So far, the Bush administration has begun to
redirect policies on international family planning, climate stabilization,
renewable energy R&D, wilderness protection, endangered species protection,
air and water quality standards, nuclear waste clean-up, environmental law
enforcement, mining regulations, worker injury compensation, community
right-to-know initiatives, drinking water standards, and food safety
procedures. And that was just the first four months. World Watch presents a timeline of the administration's
emerging environmental agenda.

On March 27, 2001, Christine Todd Whitman, head of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced that the United States, which
is responsible for 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, has "no
interest" in the Kyoto Protocol. Despite a deluge of scientific reports linking
human actions to climate destabilization, Whitman said that the new
administration did not plan to endorse the Protocol, which was negotiated (with
U.S. participation) in 1997 as a part of the Framework Convention on Climate
Change, and which is intended to curb national carbon emissions.

International reaction was swift and highly unfavorable. French
President Jacques Chirac asked, "how can we affirm the right of a protected and
preserved environment to future generations" at a time of "global warming and
of a disturbing unacceptable challenge to the Kyoto Protocol?" The Chinese
Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the U.S. about-face on Kyoto
"irresponsible." Even the strongest traditional ally of the United States, the
United Kingdom, criticized the decision to scrap Kyoto. British Environment
Minister Michael Meacher said that global warming "is the most dangerous and
fearful challenge to humanity over the next 100 years" and that Bush's decision
was therefore "extremely serious."

In May, Vice President Dick Cheney unveiled the administration's
new energy strategy, which calls for the construction of almost 2,000
additional coal-fired power plants over the next 20 years-or an average of more
than one new power plant every week for that period. Cheney is a former CEO of
the Halliburton Company, one of the world's largest energy firms, and now heads
the administration's energy task force. President Bush is himself a former oil
man. (For an overview of the Bush cabinet's corporate connections, see page
20.)

"Without a clear, coherent energy strategy," says Cheney, "all
Americans could one day go through [the occasional rolling blackout] that
Californians are experiencing now, or worse." In order to promote its
supply-side thrust, the strategy would ease the regulations governing
powerplant construction, as well as federal air pollution standards. The strategy
would also promote the construction of additional nuclear powerplants. But its
most controversial element has been its emphasis on expanded drilling: Cheney's
recommendations include drilling for oil and natural gas in Alaska's Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and drilling for oil off the Florida panhandle in the
Gulf of Mexico. Both of these areas are of great biological value.

Despite Cheney's call for a coherent energy strategy, the
administration's budget for next year will cut federal spending on energy
conservation and alternative energy programs. In April, Cheney himself told an
audience of editors and reporters at the Associated Press's annual meeting that
he believes "conservation might be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a
sufficient basis-all by itself-for a sound coherent energy policy."

One week later, the country's top five national laboratories,
including the Berkeley National Lab in California, released a report outlining
an efficiency program that could reduce the country's electricity demand by 20
to 47 percent. The study found that government office buildings could cut their
own power use by one-fifth by adopting conservation measures, at no cost to
taxpayers.

Following Cheney's lead, President Bush is also promoting the new
energy strategy as a necessary fix to a shortage of supply. Bush argues that
"every American must realize we are in an energy crisis." But this crisis is
difficult to locate: taking inflation into account, the cost of oil in the
United States is 41 percent lower today than it was in 1980, in the wake of the
oil shortages of the 1970s. And the problems in California (which the
administration has repeatedly pointed to as the harbinger of national energy
troubles) have more to do with botched deregulation than with fuel shortages.
California's decision to open up its electricity markets to half-hearted
competition forced utilities to vie for tight supplies of natural gas without
being able to charge consumers for the growing expense. That has pushed
Southern California Edison close to bankruptcy, and sent Pacific Gas and
Electricity over the edge.

The administration's energy strategy appears to be representative
of its approach to environmental issues in general. During its first four
months in office, the Bush administration has discarded or delayed more than 20
environmental initiatives. It halted the implementation of new EPA limits on
arsenic in drinking water. It modified a Clinton administration ban on road
building in roughly 24 million hectares (60 million acres) of national
forests-a change that could open up substantial tracts of relatively
undisturbed wilderness to the mining and timber industries. Its 2002 budget
reduces funding-by more than $8 billion-for environmental law enforcement,
nuclear site clean-up, water quality assessments, energy efficiency, endangered
species protection, research programs at the EPA, and a variety of other
environmental and social safeguards. If these policies prevail in their current
forms, the administration's environmental agenda could become one of its most
lasting legacies-one that may command the attention (if not the approval) of
the world community for many decades to come. On the following pages is a
day-by-day account of the administration's emerging environmental agenda.